Somewhat Slightly Dazed
by Trinity Destler
Summary: Something happened in the little place of forgetting that Sarah... well, forgot. [Set postmovie, JS]
1. Freak Out In A Moonage Daydream

Summary: Something happened in the "little place of forgetting" that Sarah- well, forgot.

Somewhat Slightly Dazed

She was staring down at her unbuttoned jeans in a quiet sort of despair. There were no tears, no expression of anguished misery on her pretty face, no mumbling about the world's injustice, no clenched fist promising restitution. Nothing betrayed her emotion, and yet it was there, overpowering and grim. The atmosphere of the room was hushed and oppressive and she sat at the centre of it with the grudging acceptance that there was nothing she could do. The pain of a determined, independent, fiery spirit admitting that for once in her life, it was beyond her control.

A very slight whiff of summer breeze, smelling of rain and forest and night-time, disturbed the stale, stuffy air of the room. No windows were open and even if they were, outside it was the crisp, stale dead of winter. Out of the haze of her sombre misery and confusion, a murky thought surfaced; an old, denied knowledge. She wasn't surprised in the least- she couldn't be- she had waited for this moment, practically hoped for it against her better judgement, just so she could know _something _for certain. She wasn't one to avoid confrontation, especially not when she felt she was being abused. She had lain in wait for this eventuality, knowing that- if her anger was justified- it would come.

Out of the very corner of her eye she could just make out the shadow of his figure, could feel the weight of him beside her on the bed slowly pulling the covers out of place as if he were gathering substance as the seconds slipped past. Of course. Of course, she had known that, expected that, had even wanted _that_- he was on _her _turf now and he had some blame in this, he wouldn't be there if he didn't. She turned her head a fraction every minute, agonizingly slowly, lifting her downcast eyes to observe the Visitor; stalling for time to rally her defences and prepare for battle. He wouldn't make it easier on her to have this conversation no matter what he had or hadn't done, whether or not he felt any guilt; it wasn't in his nature.

She looked at him blankly. Well,_ that _was unexpected.

His long, slender body was folded on the bed, one leg pulled up to his narrow chest and the other folded around the first. His feet were bare, the soles as immaculate as if he had never walked on them. He wore a thin, draping fabric of obvious high quality, the weave so fine the cloth was almost translucent black. His trousers were held at the waist by a leather draw-string and his tunic was left open down his chest to the hollow just beneath his ribcage, leaving an expanse of flawless alabaster flesh exposed. The formally ever-present pendant was nowhere on his person, she noted, wondering what that meant. Slim, elegant, long-fingered hands were folded over his knee, perfect and almost painful to watch in their perfection.

His head was tilted slightly as he watched her inspection of him, keen, pale blue eyes studying her as fiercely as she was studying him, but without the anger or suspicion that was obvious in her gaze. His jaw stood out harshly from the smoothness of his throat, like the hard lines of his impossibly high cheekbones and the slightly aquiline sweep of his nose. He was all sharp angles and crisp lines, apart from a soft, generous mouth; he looked oddly like he'd been carved from stone. He was singularly aristocratic, a certain nobility inherent to his bearing no matter what he was wearing or where he made berth: he defied even belief, much less description. His hair was now short, hanging in his eyes and brushing the tops of those magnificent cheekbones; flaming red and softer than it had been when it was frost blond.

No change could have hidden _him_, though. No change could have concealed the strangeness and the ethereal quality of his beauty. He was clearly not of the mundane world. To the uninitiated it would be difficult to imagine _where_ he came from, but observing him one couldn't help but know it was Elsewhere; that beneath the elegant exterior was something half-wild, something coiled to strike. He hadn't bothered to hide his eyes this time, nor distract from them, allowing her to see their true nature. Not of different colours as she had first thought- they were both pale, frosty blue- but one pupil remained fixedly wide while they other behaved as normally as any man's. She wondered absently if this revealed anything about his own nature and quickly decided she did not want to know.

"You look different." She murmured quietly, her voice raspy with disuse.

He smiled suddenly; it appeared instantly, encompassing his whole expression without warning, as his smiles always had. "Does that make you unhappy?"

"It doesn't make me anything." Her face sank deeper into her knees as she drew them closer to her body. Her voice was deliberately and stubbornly colourless and her eyes stared dully at an indeterminate spot over his shoulder. This wasn't going like she'd hoped- but then, it was only a matter of time before he'd say something to raise her ire and she could fall back on the welcome strength of anger.

His lips twitched downward thoughtfully and he seemed to shrug. He extended his long legs over the edge of the bed and leaned backward in a stretch, his head resting against the wall as he continued to look at her. "I'm very sorry to hear that, Sarah, I rather thought there might be something you wanted to see me about with the way you've been carrying on. I was only trying to be _accommodating_," he gestured indifferently to his appearance, "am I not more human this way?"

She looked at him wearily and sighed, blowing her hair out of her eyes. Faced with him, Sarah gathered her long dormant courage and tenacity, pulling her legs underneath her and facing him square on, green eyes flashing to life. "Sure you are and about as inconspicuous as Hoggle is in a room full of fairies!" her tone was studiously acidic. "Don't think I'm going to take the bait and fight with you, this is about something more _important _than semantics and who can make who crazier. I don't know why I'm giving you the common courtesy of actually listening to you at all! You _did _this to me and don't think I don't know it! You wouldn't be here if you didn't!"

He seemed very much entertained by this and his mismatched eyes glittered, "Sarah, I cannot believe what you're implying!" He was mockingly incredulous.

She narrowed her eyes at him in irritation, "I didn't tell you what it was I- "

Jareth looked disappointed in her, yet managing at the same time to look amused, "Sarah, surely you can do better than that. Am I not a magical being who knows everything you do and everything you want before you do? You can't think something like this would go unnoticed." He tilted his head inquiringly, smirking in that damnable way of his. "Besides which, I'd have to know if I'd done it- wouldn't I?"

She sniffed in reply to his smug question, "If you can have it both ways, why shouldn't I? And I thought you'd at least take a pass at playing innocent, though I didn't know why you'd bother." She had valiantly resisted thinking about how lovely his accent was, giving everything he said an irresistible panache. She had almost forgotten how distracting _everything _about him was and how difficult it made it to be properly outraged with him.

His musical laugh rang through the stonily silence, a silence he didn't seem the least bit intimidated by, "Very well, Sarah, you believe what you like, but I honestly doubt that you completely understand the problem yourself."

She glared at him, but silently admitted he was probably right…..

* * *

….When the party had finally ended, Sarah had never been so satisfied with her life. She was the heroine, conqueror of the Underground and a thousand steps closer to that elusive, much discussed but seldom seen experience of growing up. She had loved and laughed and carried on, but when it was all over she had decided, resolutely, that the time had come for change. The Labyrinth wasn't real, the Goblins weren't real, and as much as it pained her to admit, Hoggle, Ludo, and Didymus weren't either. All of it held a special place in her heart and would always be her solace when she just couldn't take reality any more, but she had finally realized that it just wasn't tangible. None of it meant anything: the bogeyman couldn't hurt her, and the fairies couldn't charm her, not even the Goblin King could affect her life.

It had been quite rightly said, they really had no power over her. How could they? They were all residents of the most enigmatic of realms, her imagination. They lived only as long as she willed them into existence.

She had known it would hurt to let go- and for some reason letting go of her villain the King had hurt the most- but she had felt a powerful new sense of freedom, of self-awareness, of strength. She wasn't a damsel in distress and she may never save anyone from the clutches of a Goblin hoard, but she could do small things, she could accept her responsibilities and baby-sit Toby with a smile, finish her homework, all those plain, ordinary chores she'd thought herself so high above. The way she saw it she hadn't lost anything, the Underground and all its inhabitants would always be with her, they were part of her, they just weren't as important as she had always thought they were. No, it was her _real _family that was important.

Well, that resolution had lasted about a week and a half.

A good week and a half, mind you. Everyone noticed how very pleasant and mature Sarah was suddenly acting; Karen had complimented her, her father took her out to dinner for a nice long talk, Toby showed his appreciation by bawling at a slightly lower pitch. Everything seemed hunky-dory until she couldn't stop throwing up for about an hour a day_._

At dawn as soon as first light hit her window, she was up and retching, at dusk as soon as the sky even considered tinting itself red, she was singing in Technicolor at the porcelain microphone. The prospect of anything fried made her ill and being taken to the city- or indeed, anywhere involving the car- made her an interesting shade of lime. The Labyrinth, strangely enough, was suddenly first and foremost on her mind again; she wasn't sure what she felt, if she really suspected even then that her illness was somehow connected to her adventure or if it was just there in her thoughts again.

If she were honest with herself, the Goblin King was her first thought when she got the second shock….

* * *

… "Can't you just tell me what happened to me if you're so omnipotent, Goblin King?" She looked at him sidelong.

His brilliant red hair was slipping into those fascinating eyes as he rested his cheek on his palm. A smile tugged at his mouth again and she wondered if there were _anything_ he didn't think was terribly amusing. "I thought you didn't need me any more, Sarah, so mature and grown up. I thought you had _outsmarted _me, if I can draw a conclusion, shouldn't you?"

She gritted her teeth, still not liking the way this was going and getting frustrated with his laid back attitude, "I didn't outsmart you, I was _nice _to people and they helped me. Funny how that works. Besides, _I _don't have magic powers!"

He laughed- that intoxicating, melodic laugh- tossing back his head and fully enjoying himself. "Sarah, do you forget so quickly? I have no_ power _over you!"

Sarah couldn't have explained it, if you could have asked her to, but she felt a stab of pain in her chest at that reminder of her own words and the context in which they had been said. She let out a long, shuddering breath, "Please, if you've got any heart at all, just… don't talk about that." She was suddenly very tired.

His lip curled back over his strangely pronounced, sharp-looking incisors in a dangerous sneer, "Dreadfully sorry to make you uncomfortable, Sarah, I'd forgotten how much pain _you _have in connection to that saying, I'd forgotten how much _you _had to endure because of it." He looked so disgusted he'd rather like to spit.

She almost winced at her slip of the tongue, not wanting to cause him pain, in spite of everything, "I- "

He waved his hand dismissively, "Don't bother, I think I've had enough of you for one night." He rose and even wearing such disarmingly relaxed clothing he was imposing, practically frightening, and ever so tall compared to her. A crystal appeared on his palm without the slightest movement on his part, no flourish, not even a twitch of the wrist. He wasn't trying to impress her any more- why did that worry her?

"No," she whispered, catching his shirt-tail in her thin fingers, "Don't leave…"

He turned to look at her again, "Why should I stay?"

Sarah didn't know, she'd asked herself the same question.

He grinned, seeing something in her face that pleased him, "You are quite a puzzling creature, you know that, my dear? I wonder if you can see how very contrary you are being almost every time you open your mouth to speak to me…. You don't believe in me, do you?"

She stared, "If I didn't, you couldn't be here." It was a stubborn slogan meant to keep her safe at some undisclosed later date. A mental mantra she had prepared to keep him away.

Jareth was laughing again, "Oh, I couldn't? Well Sarah, I must thank you for telling me, I've been very much deceived for quite a long time. Whatever was I thinking?" He leaned over her, his otherworldly face inches from her own, whispering in a conspiratorial tone, "I'll tell you a secret…"

He turned his head so the warmth of his breath brushed against her ear and made her shiver, "I can do whatever I please and go wherever I please, with or without your belief." He smirked again, having spoken so softly she had barely understood, his mouth so close to her ear she was left somewhat dazed.

She resolutely hated how he always managed to have such an effect on her, "But- "

"You know, Sarah," his grin was devilish, "You just _can't_ believe everything you read."

She pressed her lips together and mentally reviewed her options. "So what do you want?"

"You chose to keep me here, Sarah, and I don't intend to rudely brush off an invitation, we are not _all_ ill mannered in that respect." He smiled mysteriously to himself then flopped back languidly onto the bed, crossing his legs at the ankles. "As for what I want… I want you to keep thinking about that little problem of yours, I want you to keep thinking about it until you- well, you'll know ….

* * *

…..The first visit to the family doctor had her quivering in her shoes for days, afraid as only things like this could make her. As soon as Karen came up to tell her she had an appointment she'd been terrified half out of her mind that they would find out about… the other part of the problem. She'd had a dozen showers, wondering why she felt so dirty and telling herself not to think she already knew. That was something else, it _had _to be something else.

Of course, it was best not to mention it. It would have to go away on its on eventually- wouldn't it?

Her family doctor, the friendly, grey-haired gentleman with thousands of tiny little lines around his eyes that told of millions of brilliant smiles. His kind features knotted in confusion as he listened to her long list of ailments and he nodded and ho-hummed and puttered about the small exam room- then he wanted to do tests. When the tests were finally finished with, he bungled back into the room looking down, perplexed, at a piece of paper.

"Ah!" he stared up at her, startled out of his thoughts, "Sarah… it seems you have developed a rather, uh, violent allergy to iron… uh…" he studied her, his brow furrowing again.

Sarah stared back at him, bright green eyes wide with surprise. Iron? But iron was…. What the hell did that mean anyway? What could it possibly mean? So she spent thirteen hours in the Labyrinth and suddenly she'd developed a magical being's intolerance for iron? _He _hadn't turned her into… something, had he? She hadn't done something to herself while she was there that…? Ah, didn't life just keep getting better and better, something was seriously wrong with her body that she didn't even want to _contemplate _and now she had a strangely Fae-like allergy. Peachy. God, there she went again with the damn peaches. She wished she had one now, wished she had a dream to slip into to escape this situation.

"Sarah?"

Her head snapped up.

"Is there something else the matter, Sarah? I called four times before you looked up." Soft blues eyes bore down into her, the doctor sizing her up as if he could see her thoughts written across her features and challenge her with the real reasons for her sickness.

She blinked back tears that came suddenly and for no reason. She gasped slightly as she wiped them away and realized what had sparked them. Blue eyes. She couldn't abide blues eyes any more, she had always thought blue was the prettiest eye colour, had always secretly coveted it, but now she couldn't stand it. Tears and this mixed up swell of emotion in her chest, why didn't anything make any sense any more?

"No, no," she hated it when her voice shook; it made her feel so weak and childish, "Nothing at all."

Doctor Ramirez regarded her silently for a moment, "I don't like it when patients hold things back, it makes me worry about them and it makes diagnosis significantly harder." He smiled gently, "Talk to me, Sarah, I'm here to help you."

She shook her head, standing to leave the office, satisfied that her stepmother would accept the allergy explanation for all of her calamity the past few weeks. Or was it months? She was starting to seriously lose track of how much time had passed while she had her head jammed into the toilet with her guts churning. The iron was suspicious, suspicious enough to set her thinking about magic and creatures and… _him _all over again when she had thought she was done with it all, thought she had finally grown up enough to know those things weren't real. Well something was real! Allergies weren't spontaneous. _Why _was she giving this serious thought?

Because she was sick all the time, allergic to iron and her… feminine visitor was at least a month late…

* * *

…"You know, I've no idea what to call you," she remarked somewhat conversationally, fiddling with her sock to avoid looking at him at any cost. She still couldn't believe she was having a conversation with him at all- not just because he was the Goblin King, but because she had been quite firmly settled in her delusion that he didn't exist.

Now that she was being honest with herself, she was starting to doubt her own conviction that she had _ever _managed to buy into the Labyrinth being a very realistic, very educational dream. She was almost positive that at least _he _had always been real to her, his image a little too crisp, too wonderful and terrible to be dismissed as nothing more than a shade of her own imagination. It would be giving herself airs to think she could have created him in all his complexities and cruelties.

"I think my name may be as safe a bet as any." Jareth sniffed, titling his head to look at her through his hair, "I _do_ have a name, Sarah."

She sighed and returned his gaze finally. Blue eyes. Why had distant recollections of those eyes brought her such pain when she hadn't even realised what she was remembering? They were beautiful, his eyes, the colour pale and pure and too intense to be looked at for long. "We were never really on that sort of friendly basis and, if I remember correctly, we didn't part on the best of terms either, Goblin King. I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for me to call you 'Your Majesty', instead." That had come out harsher than she had really intended it to be.

His lips curled back from his teeth in a sort of sneer that was not a sneer, but gave a distinct impression of sadness, "I never expected you to." his voice was steady, as always, but there was a very small vulnerability about it now. "I know you've always known my name- Hoggle told you, rather indirectly, but he told you- and I have always wondered why you never once spoke it aloud."

Sarah chose to ignore the fact that he had gotten Hoggle's name right on the first try, "I never addressed you."

Jareth sighed. "Indulge me. Say it, once," silky, smooth, very English-sounding, liquid voice. He could seduce a nun over the phone if the fancy took him.

"Why?" she stared at him, trying to read what sort of horrific scheme this would set rolling. She couldn't see anything there the slightest bit malicious, but she couldn't read him very well at all, truth be told she doubted anyone could.

"It may help you to…" he stopped and looked over at her, seeming to remember himself as his eyes became soft pools instead of icy daggers; he looked tired in that small moment and so very human Sarah wondered absently if he was a man after all. "Never mind about that, Sarah, keep thinking."

"I don't want to think, I've thought myself a hole in the ground," she exhaled a long, slow breath, trying desperately to reign in foreign emotions she didn't know how to control. "I'm not sure I even want answers any more, but I do want one: tell me why you want me to say your name. I'm not stupid, I know there's a reason."

He shrugged, thin shoulders jerking with a liquid grace that defied all laws of motion. "Some things should be taken at face value. And I might have to insist- if you continue to refuse invited informal address- that you afford me the respect my title deserves." There was a jarringly familiar arrogance about his possessives now and she scowled, knowing it had been too good to be true that he allowed her to get away with so much.

"You sound like you own the world," she scoffed, hugging her knees closer to her body and turning away from him in disdain. "I don't know how one man can be so conceited."

Soft, soft, long fingers seized her chin, the barely controlled strength in them frighteningly apparent. His angular face was centimetres away; blue eyes blazing and red hair seeming suddenly even brighter as it hung over them. "I am not a man, nor am I held to the standards of mankind; it is _not_ your place to judge me! There is a vastness of difference between conceit and pride, and I have _every _right to be proud. You forget, Sarah, you forget too easily that I am a king. I may not be a kind king, I may not be _your _king, _but I am King_." His whisper was harsh and rasping, unlovely and terrible, grating in her ears as he drove his point home with his sharp-as-steel voice.

She hated herself for almost sobbing under the heat of his gaze, she would have rather died than show such weakness less than a year ago, but she couldn't help it. She had reached a point of breaking at last, facing too much, too alone, with no one to save but herself and no obvious enemy to fight. And he had never been this close to her before, she would swear to that despite the eerie feeling of familiarity, of _déja-vu_, that the situation was evoking in her. "Please," her voice wobbled with restrained tears, "please, Jareth…"

His eyes suddenly softened and his hand fell away, his sigh was quiet and strangely peaceful, "Misery, scorn, anguish, ecstasy and rapture; thy name is woman." He'd spoken so softly, his lilting accent much heavier than usual, that she was certain she was not meant to have heard these words- until she realized that if she was not meant to hear them, then she wouldn't have…..

* * *

…When her ever-pale complexion brightened to the ruddy glow of spun gold and yet somehow paled even further beneath its new radiance, it had made her beauty almost painful. Looking into the mirror on her well-loved vanity, she had tried desperately to quiet the insistent thought that she reminded herself of someone, someone else whose beauty was terrible in its intensity, jarring in its rawness. She didn't- _couldn't _look like him, not even in the tiniest, most insignificant detail. It Was. Not. Possible.

When she had gained a modest number of pounds that thickened and enhanced all of the curves that made her look physically mature beyond her years, it had nothing but pleased her stepmother. She had always told Sarah she was too beautiful a girl to spend all her Friday evenings alone in the park, that she was ahead of the game- said with a wink and a laughing smile. Karen really wasn't that bad, in fact, she was a lot better than Sarah would have liked to admit- evil stepmother's were far more common in her favourite stories than good ones.

It wasn't until that accepted- welcomed- weight had turned into a small pouch of flub on her belly that her blonde-haired guardian had started asking her about what she had for lunch at school and wondering aloud if 'Sarah was starting to spend more time just hanging around the house'. It wasn't until that pouch- not to mention her once-perfect hips- swelled enough to warrant a new wardrobe she had _really _broached the subject. Boy, that wasn't pretty. Karen knew her stepdaughter, knew she walked everywhere and spent countless hours outside, knew she ate healthfully, and that she rid herself of most of her evening meal anyway because of her unusual malady.

So when Karen insisted they go to a doctor- a doctor who was _not _the trusted, reassuring Dr. Remirez- Sarah been willing to hazard a guess it wouldn't be about a new diet and exercise program. What she herself suspected, almost totally acknowledged in the very deepest recesses of her mind, was about to be thrown into her face. With questions, questions she couldn't answer. She wasn't ready to face the accusation much less create an explanation; she hadn't even confronted herself, _how _could she confront her parents? Sometimes she wished… no. Wishing was just a bad idea.

The doctor had fixed her with a disappointed frown the moment she'd walked into the examination room, then she whirled out a clip board and clicked her pen- held poised and ready to write- with such exuberance and lightening speed that Sarah felt like if she'd blinked, she'd have missed it all.

"Name," the doctor's business-like voice demanded.

"Sarah Williams." She had to know that already, she'd been talking to Karen four almost half an hour. Why…?

She couldn't even finish the thought before the barrage returned after a brief cacophony of pen scraping paper, "Age, Medication, Complaints, Reason for Visit." Bam, bam, bam- like gunshots that left her momentarily speechless.

"Sixteen, none, nausea in the early mornings and the evenings, because…" Sarah trailed off. Karen had told her to come, told her it wasn't up for discussion and that her sudden weight gain without any change in routine was strange and could be a sign of something much more serious than a few extra pounds. That was a load of malarkey and they both knew it. Sarah snapped her mouth shut, though, she wouldn't say the _real _reason out loud- especially not when the doctor's face announced loud and clear that she already knew.

The doctor nodded, her cropped black hair scattering in dark brown eyes as she leaned over to scribble on her clip board some more. She wasn't going to make Sarah say it. Thank God for small mercies.

"Sexual activities?"

Sarah blanched, modest even though she should have expected this, "I… I'm a virgin, doctor." She wished she knew herself if that were true or not. Her head told it had to be, surely she would have _noticed_ if something had happened to alter that fact. Then again, something else screamed inside her that she was lying- how _dare _she lie about something so important, so sacred… What _was _that feeling of guilt nagging in her heart? Nope. The conviction stood, "I've never had a boyfriend." Truth. _Gospel._

The doctor's eyebrow arched, but she didn't say anything else. She snapped the pen through the clip on her board and put it down on the counter behind her, leaning over to wash her hands and pull on her transparent medical gloves. By the time she had turned around again, prepared to get this mess started, Sarah had resigned herself to her fate of total humiliation. She didn't know what would come of it, but either way, she didn't think she was going to like it.

An hour and a half later the pretty, young doctor stepped out into the waiting room where Karen was seconds away from succumbing to the temptation of biting her perfectly manicured nails down to the nub.

The doctor's usually bright face was expressionless and her hands held that irritatingly ominous clipboard as if it were the crown jewels. "Mrs. Williams?"

Karen shot up and across the room like a tripped spring, "Well-!" her voice was a small shriek and she cleared her throat several times before trying again, more politely. "I mean, w-what are the results, doctor?"

The doctor swallowed an inappropriate smile and looked grave again, "I'm afraid _all _my tests were positive. Our suspicions are confirmed. I don't really know what to say, but would you like me to come in and help you talk some straight sense to your daughter?"

Karen glanced from the door to the doctor's open face and intense, serious gaze. She swallowed and nodded slowly, not bothering to correct the technicality that Sarah wasn't really her daughter. Stepping into the room to where Sarah sat, chin perched on her palm, looking rather calm and collected just made her more antsy than ever. She glanced behind her to see the doctor shutting the door and took a deep breath.

"Sarah," she watched the dark head snap up and evergreen eyes meet hers levelly, "Dr. Meekings did some tests and…" this was going to hurt no matter what she did. It was going to hurt and confuse and ruin and… She sighed and took another deep breath for strength before blurting it out in one quick sound, "You're pregnant."

All colour that was left to the already pale teen drained from her skin. She stared, eyes enormous, at her stepmother's familiar frame and the strange, yet reassuring shape of the doctor standing behind her in scrubs. She had known, it would have been ridiculous not to know- but to be _told _once and for all by a medical doctor…!

"Am not!" her voice was an unrecognisable squeak, "It's impossible! I've never had…!"

Lydia Meekings took the step foreword necessary to involve herself directly and become more than back-up for Karen, "Yes you have, Sarah, I checked that first after I confirmed your condition. You remember… Anyway, I checked and it doesn't matter what you say, Sarah- it's very clear you _have _done it. It's best to start telling the truth now, while you have your chance."

Fiery green eyes hardened stubbornly, "I'm _telling _the truth," her arms crossed over her chest, "I've never had a boyfriend. I've never kissed a boy. I've _never _had sex! I _cannot _be pregnant!"

Brown eyes softened while Karen remained speechless in the background, "Have you ever been to a bar or a rave, Sarah- ever had a lot to drink…?" Delicate, probing, harmless questions.

"No! I don't go to those kinds of places, I don't know those kinds of people- I don't know anyone! I'm always alone, ask Karen, she's always the first person to point it out. I haven't got any friends to take me to those places or get me to do those things!" She did have _some _friends, but it was hardly _their _fault and it wasn't as if she could tell anyone about them. Especially not when she was pretty sure she was still telling herself they weren't real… wasn't she?

"Sarah, you are carrying a child, your hymen has been completely ruptured, you-"

"Let me go home, now. I want to go home. Karen, take me home." Sarah demanded desperately, defiantly, and commandingly all at the same time through some paradox of tone. And there was no denying her.

The following week spent in seclusion in her room had not loosened her tongue to her parents, it hardly could have when she didn't have any answers to give them; though the more time she spent locked up, the closer she came to a very good idea. She was six months pregnant with an impossible child, showing considerably, and very, very unamused. The more she thought about it, the less amused she became. Mercifully, however, the day after the doctor visit her sickness disappeared as mysteriously as it came… unfortunately this also precipitated her return to the local institute of higher learning.

High school is meant to be fun, but for most of us the reality just isn't quite what we were hoping. Sarah's life at school had never been good, but considering she was a dreamer, an avid reader, and someone who got passionate in English class, it was surprising she wasn't worse off than she was. When she walked in wearing a bulky sweater that failed to conceal her condition, the spontaneous whir of every gossip's brain coming to life was practically audible, the frown on the face of every teacher was flagrantly visible, the electric current of new disdain and shock and curiosity was palpable. Oh, this was _fabulous_.

A month later she had permission to use the elevator instead of climbing the stairs between her classes, she had free reign over her own bathroom breaks and she had a special chair in every class. And she was getting to be enormous. Her classmates stared every single day, never tiring of wondering at the mystery of Sarah Williams- someone totally shunned that had managed to get laid younger than some of the popular girls. Her teachers seemed more disgusted the more obvious her state became and eventually the principal decided it was 'best for _her_' to stay out of school until _after_. After what she hadn't specified- just _after._

She was starting to hate her room after sitting in it almost three weeks solid…..

* * *

…"Jareth, couldn't you please just tell me what the hell is going on?" Her voice was quiet and overpowering, tired, but anything but resigned.

He was looking down at his hands, fiddling with his own long, deft fingers, as if even he were fascinated by their slender perfection. He glanced at her, then down again, fiddling restlessly- then he locked eyes with her and his fidgeting hands stilled. One unfurling as he slowly- slowly reached towards her.

Her eyes fluttered briefly and she shivered as she anticipated his fingers against her cheek- but his hand drifted through the air in front of her, an artistic line swooping elegantly downward through the air, away from her face and towards her swollen stomach. She'd barely had time to wonder if she was relieved or disappointed with the change of direction before his cool touch rested against heated skin. Her swollen belly was exposed by too-small clothing and left bare and defenceless before him. Something inside her leapt at the contact and the pain was somewhat soothed… physically and emotionally.

Mismatched blues eyes regarded her sadly, his free hand coming up and twirling through her rich dark hair, his face suddenly close to hers. "You have all the answers you would seek, Sarah…" his voice was gentler than she could ever remember hearing it before, "Remember… remember, I will it so."

She shook her head without breaking his gaze, "I-I can't remember anything… I don't…"

Hawkish features were just _too close_ and closing, he tilted his head as he had done so many times before, though not in question or mockery or arrogance this time. In a pique of sad, sad beauty he made her gasp with his sheer presence- with this vision which was simply the reality of him. She had only the tiniest fraction of a moment to savour it before soft, perfect lips brushed against hers for an even shorter time- the embrace was so brief she would never have been sure if it had happened or not if not for its rapid and enormous effect.

_'Remember…' _the most sublime voice she would ever hear had commanded her. And so she did.

_Blackness, all blackness and damp and danger, musk and thinly veiled threat. How childish of him to think he could frighten her with _this. _This was nothing, darkness she had conquered a long time ago when her night-light had failed her at age six. Darkness was a old friend she'd made peace with and solitude was practically family. Not that she was thinking that at the time; all she was thinking at the time was that she had to get out, out- further in, to the center, to the bitter end and all that. She had to find him and defeat him at his own game. She'd enjoy it, too, because he deserved it- the arrogant bastard.  
_

_Keep your eyes on the prize, that was the only line of defence she had against the temptations he threw at her. Temptations no human being should be asked to resist; the temptation of her dreams, to be selfish, to give in, to be a coward, to have everything she ever wanted. And _him_. She wasn't sure what that one was about. He seemed intent on distracting her _personally _and was far too good at it for her tastes, especially the little things she was only half sure she'd actually seen._

_Light flared up in (what was revealed to be) the small cavern and he was sitting there- lounging there, languishing- he was seeped in devil-may-care and relaxation, all curves and elegance. His unnerving eyes peered at her through the gloom and his unnatural frost blond hair seemed to fall just right to properly accentuate the sharpness of his features and the danger inherent to him. Nothing else mattered and nothing else was visible to her for long uncounted minutes as she stared into his face._

_"Do you know, Sarah," he said playfully, his voice somehow managing_ _not_ _to startle her even though it came suddenly and broke her reverie. "You've made it rather far… the Oubliette isn't often reached, even less often required."_

_She held her ground and her face remained almost expressionless, "Fascinating." Her answer was sharp and sarcastic- though it was the truth, in a way. Not that she could let him know that.  
_

_His laugh rang in the small space, echoing in a harmony of melodious mirth that made her grit her teeth in irritation. "Sarah, Sarah, you do love to pretend nothing takes you unawares, don't you? You haven't the first idea what I'm talking about. Don't deny it on my account, whether you do or not, we both_ _know the truth of it_._" He laughed again, chuckling to himself, "'Oubliette' is a French word, my dear, borrowed from that unspeakable language by the faeries before the French knew it themselves- it means 'little place of forgetting'."_

_She still held his eyes as she tried to puzzle out this latest twist and why the 'little place of forgetting' was so significant- she didn't need him to say anything to know that much, at least. Her mind slowly rewound all the information Jareth had given her, picking over it for the clues and hints he was wont to drop for her. "Required?"_

_He smiled, dangerous looking incisors peeking out over his lip, a little more pronounced than they had been before- at least it seemed that way. "Clever little Sarah, I always said you were clever…" his voice had changed somehow and she could not begin to figure out what the change was before he was speaking again. "I wonder if you know, dear, dear Sarah, just how much of your ripe, innocent young heart is blatantly upon your sleeve?"_

_She reared in confusion, dark green eyes narrowing slightly- though hostility was a distant memory and she could barely rouse any anger or even indignation at anything he said. Something about the air in this place sucked away her dark emotional energy. "What do you mean?"_

_Feral grin and hungry, terrible eyes glittering in the darkness that seemed to drape over him like a fond lover while somehow leaving his entirety illuminated for her to see. "I mean you display yourself- no, no not your body, you silly little girl, you needn't look so offended." He made an elegant gesture that defied interpretation, "You display your mind, your soul, your heart- all bared for the world to see, to criticise, to hurt… Why, your courage is exhausting."_

_"I…" her mouth hardened into a thin line and a look of determination overcame her, "I am who I am and I don't care what anyone _thinks _of me! I won't let anybody tell me who to be or how to dress or what to believe in or…." She trailed off as if remembering to whom she was speaking. "I won't let you take that away from me, either; I won't let you manipulate me. I'm going to win."  
_

_Jareth was leaning foreword in the gloom, hanging upon her every word, giving her the unpleasant sensation that she was being measured, her worthiness decided. "Audacity, courage, spirit and determination- treasure your freedom of self, Sarah, the rest of your race has learned too well that the world crushes it as quickly as possible. No one can take it from you if your freedom is a state of mind- the power of one is the personal conviction that you can achieve anything you set out to do." He grasped at air and made a tight fist as if he'd caught something._

_Sarah stared at him in wonder- what on earth possessed him to say such things to her? In the middle of a game like this? A game where they were most inescapably on opposing sides- hell, he _was _the opposing side. What… Then a strange thought came into her head, followed by a rush of others, thoughts and memories and a thousand play-acted lines and stories spoken aloud to empty parks and teddy bears…. _Freedom… _Wasn't that the _point_! She recognized this… knew it… Those words were the outcome and the moral of every story she'd ever created or loved… Beneath the fantasy there was something _else.

_"You!" She sputtered, pointing at him mindlessly, "You've always been there!"_

_He looked mildly shocked for a half second before recovering his composure and smiling slightly, "I have. Don't you know me, Sarah? I know you."_

_Her mind spun, "I… I..." she sank to her knees and he followed her to the ground, keeping level with her at all times and waiting for her to meet his eyes. "I..."_

_"Think! Why do you suppose I have the power to offer you your dreams, Sarah? Why do you think I came to _you_ when I am called upon- one way or another- by countless others and never heed them? Why do you think you knew me without any idea what I looked like? In the story the king doesn't answer the wish himself… Think!" He was close to her now. His voice was a low and insistent whisper, harsh and yet gentle, as impossible as suited him._

_She had thought and she knew. "I know you…" _You haunt my dreams and the corners of my eyes; you burn my heart when I try to reach you. _"Why didn't you show yourself to me? I don't understand… I want to _see _you…" She grabbed at him suddenly, catching the soft fabric of his shirt in her hands, pulling at him as if she could peel away his disguises._

_His fingers curled over hers and she stilled, "You see me now as I truly am. I couldn't have been myself in your world, in your mind all this time; it would have overwhelmed you. I haven't lied to you, I wear no mask, but you never _asked_ me who I was. It wasn't meant to be like this, Sarah, you weren't meant to do something so irresponsible- so stupid! I didn't want to have to teach you this lesson... preposterous little girl- must we do everything the hard way?" His tone had become vaguely affectionate and annoyed at the same time, but Sarah had long since stopped really listening. _

_As his hands fell away, hers moved from his chest __and trailed up to rest against his cheeks, feeling the warmth of his skin beneath her palms she was struck suddenly by his reality. "You've always been there… you were always _real_ and I never…" Her fingers curled to find purchase in his soft flesh- something to prove to herself that he was there, that he _was _flesh. "Jareth...!" Inexplicable tears strayed down her cheeks and her hands wound into his hair as she buried her face in his chest, pressing into his skin. "I wanted you to be real so badly, I didn't know what you were or that you were a person- you were just… everything, you were magic and dreams…"_

_She let out a heart-wrenching sob, more than half out of sheer disbelief and happiness, and wrapped her arms around his thin waist, hands roving over his back and her cheek still pressed against him. She tried to memorize his every nuance, throw the evidence of her own senses into the face of logic- he had to be real! He was warm and soft and safe and strong! It wasn't enough and she wrenched her head up to look at him, stare into his ethereal face. "I never thought that everything I ever wanted and couldn't have…" her voice was thick and a little broken, "could be my only enemy."_

_Her hand curved against the back of his neck as they regarded each other endlessly. Glittering, magical blue and deep, dark, impenetrable evergreen locked, recklessly longing and coming to terms with the object of that longing being right in front of them and yet unreachable. Neither stretched a hand across the abyss between them, the abyss that they themselves had constructed for the sake of their petty little roles. She hadn't known and he'd been helpless to do anything else. After all, it would likely be his _only _chance to meet her face to face. He couldn't have refused her summons; not this child, who he had watched grow in so many ways and who in so many ways always remained the same. She was a strange soul, old like a faery and young like a mortal child, different than any other human who had believed in him, and they were getting to be few these days, especially in that she never "grew up" and _ceased_ to believe._

_Sarah couldn't take it any more, she had spent her whole life chasing down the elusive feeling in the depths of her heart that there was something more out there destined for her, the feeling that something was with her, on her side, something magical and unknown. She had done everything to suspend her own world and pursue the feeling, she'd spent hours hoping for one tiny sign that it was real, that she was right, that there _was _a Something bound to happen to her. Now He was kneeling in front of her, inches away, one of her hands rested on his chest and the other curled possessively around his neck. He was real, she knew it, but she hadn't proved it to herself._

_He was _hers_, damn it!_

_Her need to touch him rose to bursting inside of her and she pushed herself up while yanking him down, meeting him halfway with a desperate, passionate, but inexperienced mouth laying claim over his. The kiss was feverish and her hands worked themselves into his hair again as she tried to pull him closer and closer- needing him and unwilling to ever let him go again; terrified that he might evaporate into the dreams he personified. They were pressed together so tightly, the entire length of their bodies melded into one form, that it was impossible to discern where one ended and the other began._

_She wouldn't let go._

_The kiss was progressing from a desperate, clumsy need for contact into a real, loving kiss. Sarah's head was spinning and her whole world was crashing down around her as the Goblin King finally chose to take control of the embrace and massaged her mouth with his. His arms were wrapped around her and his long legs had somehow come out from beneath him to stretch either side of Sarah, her own denim-encased limbs folded over his and either side of him. She'd never know exactly how it happened, but in an instant their lips had parted and they were further sealed together, intruders in each other's mouths as Sarah's hands trailed down the buttons of her shirt._

_She wasn't close enough!_

_When skin touched skin she shivered violently, shifting the kiss as she wriggled out of her billowing collar shirt and then reached foreword to shove Jareth's down off his slender shoulders. It was wonderful and terrible and awesome and unfathomable and she just couldn't take it all in. And she still wasn't close enough! His naked flesh burned her as her hands chased each other all over his exposed torso- she didn't know what she was doing and she wasn't thinking about it the way should would have thought about it in a more orthodox situation. In a normal place, in her own world; in another lifetime. It wasn't stripping, it wasn't sexual- it was sensual, but it was the pursuit of something other than sex, it was a deep-seeded need to be close to what she had longed for, for as long as she could remember, and had never quite fully believed could be real._

_It was the desire to preserve and grasp this supernatural creature that she somehow, just now, loved with her whole being._

_Her hands trailed down thin, lightly muscled arms to the base of Jareth's black leather gloves, and she knew that was the very last barrier between her and everything she wanted. She yanked, both gloves at the same time, leaning back and breaking the kiss long enough to stare him in the eyes and hold his hands up in front of him before baring them._

_They were perfect and slender and elegant and so much more sublime without a layer of clumsy leather between them and the world. When bare hands touched Sarah's neck, her collar bone, her own hand, her naval; when his fingers trailed all over her body for the very first time Jareth lost himself completely. A faery's heart is given once, and his was given as he cried a single tear that shattered on Sarah's stomach._

_"I'll need you, now, Sarah…" he whispered, as the tiny slivers disappeared into her skin, "All my life."_

_"It's only forever." Her own voice echoed strangely in her ears and she stared up at him as if he were the cause. What was this thing she had allowed to happen? What were these alien feelings swelling in her chest that told her she must never_, ever_ let him leave her alone again, never allow herself to believe that Aboveground- the land on top of the Hills- was all there was. She had known him somehow, all her life, and had yet to really learn the first thing about him._

_She was crying again, "Who are you…?" Sarah _hated _crying!_

_Bare hands threaded through her hair and cupped her cheeks, mismatched blue eyes glittering and intense and almost frightening, "I could be anything you want me to be- do you understand that?"_

_She shook her head violently against the restraining pressure of his hands, "I don't want you to be anything, I want you to be _you_…" Her own hands trailed up his arms to cover his, her fingertips caressing and flinching back as though burned, "I want… I don't know why, but I think I've always loved you…."_

_He sighed deeply, letting out a long and shaky breath, before locking eyes with her. "I never allowed myself to imagine you would say that."_

_And then he was kissing her with the same desperate longing with which she had kissed him- and she didn't know why, but there were no more questions in the moment, there was no more 'why'; there was only simple understanding of what didn't and never would make sense. They fell back, entwined, on the floor of the Oubliette, the meaning of which Sarah had already forgotten...  
_

Sarah shook herself as the memory released her- a spell of some kind, she imagined- her brain seemingly permanently disconnected from her body. Then thoughts came in a rush, thoughts and feelings and questions- and outrage and anger- and…

She whipped her head around to look at Jareth, who was sitting against the wall, his head back and his eyes staring sightlessly into space, glazed over as his pointed teeth chewed his lip raw. He did look more human in the glamour he had affected for her benefit, slightly less dangerous and terrifying in his beauty, his skin a more passable shade of flesh rather than the almost bloodless alabaster it had been before. As she studied him she felt her own face flush crimson red. There he was, sitting so casually on her bed; the King of the Goblins, the father of her child… she _slept _with _the Goblin King._

She tried to squash the desperate plea inside her to cross the distance between them and fall into his arms- and the far more embarrassing desire that wanted more than that- she knew she couldn't just pretend everything was all right. In the Oubliette something had suspended reason and common sense and dignity and… _scruples! _There had to be more to it than she remembered, there just had to be, she couldn't accept that she had had a small interlude of love-making with her nemesis right in the middle of her war against him. He was the villain, it didn't matter that he had always been present, he was _still _the villain! She wasn't allowed to be in love with him!

"Jareth!" she squeaked, the power leaving her voice as he responded and turned to look at her. Her vision clouded with unwanted images of the newly recalled first time she had yelled that name. Sensory overload and shock warred in her and blocked out rational thought and even emotion. She just couldn't grasp this!

He seemed reluctant to speak and raised his hand in an unfurling gesture that asked for her to say her piece. Sarah noticed- really noticed- for the first time that his hands were bare. He had always worn gloves before, at all times in the Labyrinth except that once when she had pulled them off. What was so important about keeping his hands covered- and what had happened that it didn't matter now?

"I…" now that she had his attention she didn't have the first idea what to say to him. "I… I don't believe it!"

His gaze was sad and he looked suddenly very tired, as he had looked when they had had their final confrontation what felt like so long ago. He rested back against the wall, his gaze hooded and his breathing shallow. When he finally spoke, his voice had lost all of its alluring command and mystery; it was tired and burdened, like the depths of his eyes. "I never really had any aspirations that you would…."

Something strange happened then and Jareth seemed to fade, not enough to appear transparent or even ghostly, but faded- worn like the pages of a book that has been read too many times. He seemed less imposing, less… _real._

Sarah was lost, the need to help him, to make that horrible anguished, haunted look disappear and never return was overpowering- the need to protect the Goblin King, ironic, but enormous. She wanted so badly to succumb, but had- tragic irony- lost the power. "How did this happen, Jareth? I don't understand, I don't know what to think! How could you go from being everything I was fighting against to being everything I'd ever wanted- it doesn't make _sense!"_

"You have a better explanation, I suppose!" he exploded with every ounce of royal indignity. "Wholesome, perfect, beautiful, _precious _Sarah could never, never love the _wrong_ prince. Never fall for the temptations of the dark side, never be corrupted by falling under the spell of her _enemy_!" his voice was rising with every word and had travelled up several decibels- and octaves- before he'd finished, spitting out the last word as if it poisoned his tongue.

"How could I love you- I don't know anything about you!" She wrapped her arms around her huge belly, not certain why and far from wanting to understand her own actions. He couldn't have just lied; he'd never outright lied to her, never.

"My name is Jareth le Fay, I have never loved anyone before in all my uncounted years, I hate the mundane, I hate avarice, stupidity and empty affairs, I love music and games… and I love you, Sarah. What else do you need to know? The essence of who I am, that you do not need to learn- you remember, you have known me your whole life, as I have known you." He refused to look at her and instead stared at her ceiling as if it were the most fascinating piece of architecture he had ever seen.

"But-" this conviction, this righteous anger wouldn't go away, she'd been clinging to it for far too long. What he was saying _couldn't _make sense!

"You destroyed me once, Sarah, it would be most insensitive of you to do it again." He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw harshly, tiny muscles twitching with the effort of total control; Sarah realized with a start that he was fighting back tears. And he was a little more faded than he had been moments before. "Chose your words with care…"

"I can't…" her voice was breaking.

Jareth leaned forewords, "Be a dear and… summon me when you 'can'." His tone was light and expressionless and a few seconds more and he was very briefly his own true self, frost blond hair spilling over his shoulders, before his form was overtaken by that of an owl. A magnificent creature, pure white as the driven snow with auburn wing-tips. He lingered for a moment, massive wingspan stretching- then he was gone.

Sarah hauled a pillow over her pregnant belly and wept into it, knowing the instant that he was gone that he had given her nothing but the truth. She'd loved him in the Labyrinth, had always loved him, and loved him still. It just didn't make sense, she'd feared him, had very nearly hated him at moments- how could it change? He gave her absolutely no reason to love him… Then again, she gave him no reason to love her. Her child would be born fae- then what? What if she called him back? Where would any of it go from here….

TO BE CONTINUED…

..._AN: Subject to much editing. This is my first Labyrinth fic and I'd appreciate constructive criticism, especially on whether or not I got them into character. I'm concerned about Sarah because I spent so much energy most of the time trying to get Jareth. Then I got involved and forgot to concentrate on either. sweatdrop Lemme know what you thought, please- and be gentle._


	2. Equal Footing

_(Notes: Go **Ripper101**! The title is indeed purloined from Bowie. The glamour is more Thin White Duke than Ziggy, though; I based it on how he looked in _The Man Who Fell to Earth,_ also another place where you can see that his eyes are the_ same _colour. Thanks to everyone for the kudos on Jareth's character; I wanted to have a grasp of him because I feel too many authors don't capture his complexity, making him either too good or too evil._

_I edited the first section and I think I can now live with Sarah's characterization. She's sixteen in the story, which is my age; so it should be interesting (I've never written my own age before). I've sort of mushed Celtic mythology and post-medieval superstition about the fae together in this chapter… I hope I don't make anybody's brain hurt. This story is going to be longer than I originally thought having tried unsuccessfully for too long now to try to wrap up in just two sections. So at least two more chapters are probably on their way._

_Thanks to all the reviewers! Onward!)_

Somewhat Slightly Dazed

Part II: _Equal Footing_

Her feet were propped up against the wall, pushing her chair back onto two legs as she let her eyes wander around the dark kitchen where she had waddled after her disturbing confrontation with… him.

She didn't want to think of him as 'Jareth'. It was far too personal a thing to call him casually by his name, it sparked a familiarity and an unpleasant stirring of ache somewhere deep in her chest that she just couldn't bring herself to face. Not after what she had said to him, not after causing that same softly anguished, crushing, beautiful, heartbreaking look to cross his harsh features for a second time. Their partings always seemed to cause him some terrible disappointment, as if he were not just defeated in his machinations but genuinely pained...

He couldn't just be 'Jareth', the more straightforward half of her brain picked up as her first line of thought trailed off into sentiment. If she allowed herself to think of him as just 'Jareth' she would forget that he wasn't like people, _wasn't _a person; he was a cold, cruel, conniving, deceptive, merciless, malevolent _Goblin King_. She couldn't ever let that precious knowledge slip out of crisp focus for the tiniest split second. If she did, all she would remember was that look again, that look not of wounded pride or foiled plans or arrogance but of unadulterated _hurt_ and a strange glimmer of regret, of the tiniest amount of _pity _thrown in just to confuse her. That look that made him far more human than she could comfortably believe him to be.

It haunted her. He wasn't a creature of emotions: not the tender, sympathetic, sentimental emotions he had allowed her to see, anyway. He had been built for violent passions, searing rage, lingering disdain, reformed flirtations and careless affairs, not love-lorn, sonnet-esque _feelings. _It was written in his aloof expressions, penciled across his mannerisms as plainly as was his regal status. She knew she must have hurt him terribly to make his reactions to her so _quietly _awful.

Then again, she wasn't supposed to know him that well; had told herself that she didn't know him, had almost managed to _believe _she didn't know him. That was why she was sitting alone in a cold, dark kitchen at four o'clock in the morning sipping the hot coca she had made for herself, wasn't it? Because she _did _know him, no matter how she tried to wish she didn't. Knew him and his hasty, violent moods inside out, knew his affected coldness and the way he wore it like a mask and armour all in one, to conceal and to protect his true reactions. She knew the intimacies of his singular personality, the many facets of his strange temper, the intricacies of his beauty. And knowing it all she wondered how she was going to make herself forget.

Her reactions to him when she allowed herself to see him as he was, take what he said at face value, truly look at him in all of his dizzying opulence, frightened her. She didn't like to be frightened. So she sat in that perfect blue-gray darkness of four o'clock in the morning, considering the things the fey invading her room had said to her and trying to make sense of her muddled memories and feelings. The darkness was like a shroud of comfort, warm and familiar to her tired senses, the welcome embrace of oblivion clearing her head of the disturbances of sight and sound.

She sighed.

She did know him.

As she pieced through the happenings of the oubliette one at a time, she could easily see that they had happened so, just as he had shown her, and the explanation for her actions must come from her, not from him.

She remembered all the little games she had always played with herself to distract her budding mind from house or yard work, living out a story in which she was inevitably the heroine. In every little soap opera she faced the tyranny of her step mother in the form of some wicked queen or witch or other appropriately vile thing. She was always clever, young, pretty and secretly a princess or destined to greatness or a sorceress or something like that. She had always used enormous, gallant, eloquent speeches to prove how good a ruler she was, how wise, how insightful, how flawed the world and the current leadership and how she could do better.

All very run of the mill stuff, to her way of thinking. What was strange was the way the words pleading for freedom and justice and truth seemed to flow from her, the way she could almost hear the taunts and arguments from the opposing nobility as she fought for the rightful ruler. The way she never, ever paused to think about what ought to come next. In all the time she had played out her games of sagas and foreign lands, she had never once felt as if she were talking to the air, never once felt silly or foolish, never abandoned a story before seeing it the whole way through, always compelled to finish.

It was him. He had been there, wanting to hear the end, pushing her to go on when her lofty speeches briefly faltered, feeding her the arguments against her invisible opponents' scrutiny and objections. Why? She had always felt him, knew there was something strange afoot, something Other- but never stopped to wonder what it was- that playful warmth in the back of her mind whenever she let herself drift off into the world of make-believe. It had just been her muse then- hah! She knew him! Without ever having seen him, she'd known him at least as well as she knew herself and quite possibly better. It made so little sense she almost wanted to laugh.

Jareth. There was no avoiding the name no matter how much she tried, the name or its connotations. It was ridiculous to continue to leave him faceless in her neat dissection of him, not now, not when she was forced to admit just how much he had touched in her life. So where did that leave her? Still in the oubliette, she would think.

Realizing slowly that that wonderful, guiding, helping force she had felt all her life- teaching her things that the world had long since forsaken- was real flesh and blood had been like a blow to the head. In the half-darkness of that godforsaken pit, lost in the endless twisting of the Labyrinth, her vision swam and she had stared at him. This impossible man who taunted her, hurt her, stole her little brother from her just to teach her a lesson she would have learned anyway, twisted her dreams and toyed with her mind. This man she'd vowed to oppose was suddenly all the things she had chased at the edges of her dreams ever since she could remember.

This being had somehow spirited her away, had been doing so her entire life and she hadn't even noticed.

Who he was, what he'd done, all of it briefly didn't matter as she realized that he was really there. What he was overwhelmed her and then she'd _needed _to touch him, to reassure herself he was tangible, living, breathing, that he would not pop like a soap bubble, shatter and disappear like so much air, dissipate like the dreams always had before she could ever really understand them. It was too much for her feverish brain to reason out, his being her enemy, the Goblin King, and at the same time the thing that had held her back from the dates Karen wished she would venture out on. Too much for her to realize it was all entirely too contradictory for the proceedings to continue.

It was strange, even for her, but she had always felt that she shouldn't go out with any boys, even if they were to ever actually ask her, which hadn't been looking likely. She had been quietly certain somewhere in the back of her mind that there was no point, that something bigger than that was waiting for her, or she was waiting for it- either way, dating seemed like a phenomenal waste of time and energy. Someone had claimed her, destiny or something, but she knew it was a powerful thing, this force, that she couldn't- or wouldn't- fight it. Fifteen year-old boys are boring anyway when you have a capital 'd': Destiny.

Then you're in an oubliette and your capital 'd': Destiny I kneeling in front of you, real and tangible and something you could show your parents and say "See! I told you I was meant for more than babysitting and cleaning out the attic!" For a moment all the thought had left her head, then she had thought about the hours she'd spent playing wrapped inside the comfort of this ethereal presence. There it was personified before her and the years of silent mortal worship thrummed in her heart, standing up to be counted as she debated what to do, until she threw herself against his chest to feel the physical version of that treasured embrace.

Sarah had been painfully aware of every square centimeter of flesh on her body in that moment, of every nerve, of every tiny hair standing on end with the electricity of the long-awaited touch. She hadn't been sure what she was feeling, why she was crying, what could happen in the next moment… but she had been sure she never wanted it to end.

She shook her head clear of all the freshly muddled thoughts, despairing of ever thinking clearly again. Every time she settled down to the problem once and for all, the mess she'd just finished sorting out for orderly consideration ended up strewn across her consciousness in even more complicated disarray than before. And with all the energy she exerted she was left with the same dilemma to be worked all through: What on earth (or Elsewhere) had happened to her and what was she going to do about it?

Ugh. She felt like she was under the influence. Her thoughts had never beenthis fuzzy before.

"I can do this… just calm down and don't think about…" she meant a lot of things she wouldn't name when she continued, but one word summed it up for her better than any other, "_mush_."

'Mush' was all the emotions wound around her heart that didn't make any sense and showed no sign of _ever _making sense. Mush was that fluttery, 'my God, you're gorgeous today' feeling that Jareth managed to arouse in her no matter _how _insufferable he was. Mush was sleeping with the enemy of your own free will and never remembering a time when you felt more complete and whole and …wonderful. Mush was having his baby, savouring it, loving it, cherishing it and secretly thankful for the eternal bounds it promised. The oubliette and everything it now represented was choked full of mush.

_Just the facts, ma'am_, she thought, feeling a certain level of absurdity was the only thing she could count on to keep her sane these days. Well, then. Fact: she _had _slept with Jareth, one King of the Goblins, scary sneaky-devious, moderately evil villain of her very own fairytale. Fact: she was _going _to have his child whether she was prepared for it or not, whether they had found some arrangement or not- the baby was _coming. _Fact: she was- most inexplicably and quite against her will- completely in love with him. Despite also being pretty sure she hated him. Fact: She would not- _could _not- abandon her family. Lastly: Jareth was not going to be an easy person to compromise with on such things or, really, anything at all.

Sarah sighed again, rubbing her stomach. Her child would be a fey, that much was more than obvious to her, and it was unfair to let her son or daughter grow up in a world without magic that would never accept them for what they were. Not to mention that she didn't even know if a fey baby could _survive _living away from its own world… the only person she could ask about these things was not likely to be a fountain of information if she were to summon him, either. The faeries were a (rather intentionally) elusive people and humans didn't know much about them beyond how to avoid them. Though she remembered they shared the elfish aversion to iron. Fat lot of good that did her.

Of course, as was becoming clearer by the second, she couldn't resolve any of her pressing issues without talking to Jareth, and she couldn't talk to Jareth until she had dealt with all of the feelings she had just decided to put aside because she couldn't deal with them. She could almost believe, in a fit of pique, that the bastard had planned it this way. There was nothing else for it.

Sarah stood and reached for things mindlessly in the darkness of the kitchen, tossing sugar, coca, milk and a touch of vanilla in a mug for another cup of coca and leaning against the counter to wait for the kettle, hands clasped over her stomach.

Love.

Love is one of those distant, idealized, abstract concepts, more feared and simultaneously longed for and romanticized than any other. Seldom understood and even more rarely truly experienced for what it is, it's the thing that binds the furthest reaches of humanity together throughout all time, indeed the very thing that makes us human. It has the power to conjure up humanity in any being, movies about robots and enchanted objects that could feel, animals personified- the idea of love outside the ordinary world seems to fascinate creativity….

Sarah massaged her temples and checked her slowly wandering thoughts. All of that was what she had always believed, weaned on fairy stories and romances, she had believed in true love and love at first sight and fated meetings and… She was reasonably certain she believed it still, it was difficult to say in her current condition of perpetual confusion. No time like the present to figure it out. Now that she thought she may in fact be _in _love- was it at all like her stories had said it was?

No… not really. No story had ever warned her of the pain, adequately prepared her for the burning ache, the emptiness or the fierce contradiction to everything she had ever held dear. It was an all-encompassing flame she couldn't control, which scorched her when she tried; it was volatile and unstable, quick to action and slow to reason, rash and beautiful and terrifying and threatening to swallow her whole, consume her. It was quite a lot like Jareth.

She sucked in a breath at that thought. Of course she wouldn't love him the way ladies loved in her old stories; wilting, delicate, fleeting loves with many oaths and teary goodbyes and handsome faces and little to do with the mental anguish of indecision and of heart verses head. Of addiction to a lilt, not the voice itself, to a presence, not the body barely containing it, to a searing gaze and not the eyes themselves. She looked back on those once-treasured stories with sudden, wild contempt. Of course she wouldn't love him like that! He was the _villain;_ he _burned _too much for delicacy and brotherly doting and flowery words. He possessed as he loved, fueled by an inner flame- and she could give him no less in return, lest she betray them both.

She knew it would be painful to love him up close, in full range of his arrogance and temper- as long as it was from afar she could love him quietly. Sarah, being Sarah, knew that would never be enough for her- she was far from stupid; she realized that face to face with him he would terrify and infuriate her and her stubborn nature would grate on his. She knew, but it didn't matter, because though their fiery personalities _would _clash, they were the very thing that made them love the way they did in the first place.

Jareth was beautiful, but he was _not _sweet, doting or even nice He was –when he felt like it- a gentleman, but civility and common courtesy were not kindness and kindness he almost begrudged showing. He _was_ possessed of a wicked- borderline sadistic- sense of humour and had warned her himself of his own cruelty. She believed him. All of it was what made him who he was, and she loved him, so she couldn't condemn him for it.

All this of course, begged the question she'd been asking herself all along- _why _did she love him? Knowing him was a cause, not a reason; in fact, in this case it should have proved a deterrent. And yet there it was. So far it looked like she'd found _another _question and not a single answer. He was unique and fascinating, but she didn't think that could be all there was to it. Anyone could look at him and see what he was, see the same fascination, and not love him; qualities were part of it, but they weren't _why._

Heaving one last frustrated sigh, Sarah put that complex matter aside, her mind made up that she knew enough for now. Her baby needed the Underground, she couldn't just abandon her family in this world, Jareth loved her, she loved Jareth. That was more than enough. Technically it brought her once again to the beginning: Where the hell did this leave her?

She rinsed out her mug and steadied herself against the counter. She had to accept she just couldn't solve this by herself, any of it, she needed to ask him things. And- she hated this- she owed him an apology; he'd been valiantly fair to her throughout their conversation, had declared feelings it was likely difficult for him to _feel_, let alone admit to, and he had shown no anger when she had rejected simple truth. Had thrown everything in his face- rejected _him_… _again. _She didn't want to see him yet, was afraid- truth be told, though she wouldn't admit it- to be near him at all knowing she was in love with him.

It was bizarre how detached she was from emotions which overwhelmed her so completely, the reality of it having yet to really set in- she thought it might be because she hadn't gradually realized it over time as was natural, but had it thrown at her all at once. She would see him for the first time with her feelings for him intact and fully realized.

Lord give her strength to face that insufferable, wonderful fey.

It was hours after he'd left, almost half a day… twelve hours… Maybe she should wait until the thirteenth and be deeply symbolic of… something or other. Was she ready for this? She hadn't been what felt like ages ago- he had told her to call him when she was, but she didn't think she ever would be. Her jaw set, she needed _answers _whether or not she was going to be a coward about her feelings for the Goblin King- she shivered involuntarily at the title.

"Jareth."

She expected to have to repeat some sort of incantation before he would respond, something to appease his vanity and injured pride, but she felt his presence even before his name left her lips; apparently even his appetite for games dimmed. She froze; she could never live this moment again, if she did something wrong now she would regret it for the rest of her life. The cold, impersonal _knowledge_ of loving him would become an agonizingly intense _experience _in just seconds- as soon as she turned around. And she would- any moment, now. It wasn't like she was _afraid. _The idea.

She could feel the heat of his gaze studying her still figure, conscious of her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides as she struggled to find a place of strength and logic.

"As precious a commodity as it is in my Kingdom," Jareth's smooth, crafted voice caressed his artfully enunciated words, speech in his mouth elegant to the point of art, "I find myself weary of silence in your presence, Sarah."

She turned slowly, all at once dying to finally look at him and have it over with, while also hoping she could avoid it all together _and_ trying to force her expression into something resembling calm. He was perched on the counter, leaning back against the wall, one arm across his chest supporting his elbow. His index finger rested on his temple, his hand following the curve of his jaw as he leaned into it. His long legs were stretched out, crossed and balancing precariously atop the back of one of the high, wooden dinning chairs. The one Sarah had occupied earlier.

In spite of it all he looked elusively normal- reachable, touchable- the lazy, carelessness and aloof regality relaxed. He was breathtaking yet, even in his human glamour, thin frame swaddled in an oversize dufflecoat, something that might have been a dress shirt collar poking out at the neck and thick, brilliant red hair hanging long over his eyes in a fringe. She was hyperventilating. She told herself to stop.

"I'll try to talk more." She blurted, indelicately. She held back a grimace and cursed her nature for being the one to pick a fight. Sometimes her stubborn desire to be as caustic as possible even- _especially_- where it was hideously inappropriate was exhausting, even for her.

Jareth took something out of his pocket and spun it between nimble fingers, "I am not one for idle how-do-you-dos, as you may have noticed. Speaking when you have nothing to say is an exercise in futility, wouldn't you agree?" He did so love to be contrary.

Sarah made a face somewhere between amusement and disgust, "You're _such_ a hypocrite."

His inward smile was mildly malevolent, "On the contrary, my dear, I'm never more coy or superfluous than I exactly intended to be." He gazed off into space before adding, gesticulating exaggeratedly, "It's a balance."

His eyes were on her again, searching the electric green depths of hers, his gaze abruptly serious.

The moment stretched on as they stared at each other.

"What have I said about silence, my dear?" his whisper was low, dark and not remotely reassuring.

Sarah rallied herself. She couldn't let anything that might come overwhelm her temper, couldn't let herself say what she would regret for the rest of her life purely for the sake of her own headstrong pride. This once, she was going to have reign of her infamous temper- tell herself she wouldn't give him the satisfaction of getting a rise out of her- and look for offence only with just cause. Thus decided, she forced herself to take the plunge she had been dreading in new territory: humility. "I'm sorry," she said coarsely, showing none of the hybrid emotions she felt.

Strange blue eyes widened, equally strange eyebrows lifted, "Sorry? My dear Sarah, whatever do you, the _heroine,_ have to be sorry for? Are you not innocent? Did I not _do _this to you, con you, deceive you, manipulate you? Surely it would be I who would apologize- if it were in my despicable nature to do such a thing." His tone was mocking, sardonic… and effective.

He was laying it on a bit thick, but he was hitting his target square on the bull's eye. Sarah squeezed her eyes shut, fighting town her simmering temper and snappy insults aching to be thrown back at him. "I may- _almost-_ deserve that," she gritted her teeth, "but I _am _sorry I leapt to accusations and pigheadedly refused to listen to what I didn't want to hear. I _am_ sorry and you could at least have the decency to accept my apology like a gentleman."

His eyes glinted. "I thought you would have learned by now, Sarah, that I am not a gentleman; but as good manners- and conscience, I suppose, if I had one- dictate." He bowed his head slightly, unfurling his hand from the crown of his head down to his chest in a swooping, elegant salute. He was studying her again, face carefully expressionless, "What is it that you wish to say to me?"

He was wearing gloves again, gleaming white kid skin cutting him off from touch. She felt her jaw lock for a moment as it occurred to her that she should tell him, that fairness and decency demanded that she tell him, release him for the torment she knew he was hiding and trying desperately to ignore… but she couldn't. He was still too… It was hard, too hard even for her, she wasn't going to go there until she had to- business first. "We have to talk about the baby."

Jareth pretended to examine his fingernails, "What's to discuss? You continue as you are until the child is born, when I will collect it and take it to the Underground." He looked up sharply, anticipating an ugly argument, "Your babe will be le Fey, Sarah, it _needs_ to be taken to the Labyrinth in order to come into its own. I _will not _allow an illegitimate human heir to wallow away without magic, because the mother was unwilling to put her child's interests first. There are other factors here than just _you _and your being _victimized _by me."

His tone was chill and drippingly impersonal. She couldn't suffer to hear him speak of _their _child this way- as if the matter didn't concern him, disturbing her to the point that she ignored the stinging jab. "Jareth, please, don't make it like this…"

He started, staring at her in genuine amazement, "_I?_"

Sarah wanted to look away as she realized he was perfectly in the right- this _one _time- to take offense at her righteous indignation, but held his gaze with stony determination, facing whatever wrath she'd awoken.

"_I_, Sarah?" his eyes were almost glowing, though that was not the right word, the luminosity they were giving off being sharp and not at all soft or warm. "Was it _I_ who threw erroneous accusations before a word of explanation was asked for? Was it _I _who greeted with only ignorant, childish, self-righteous snobbery? Was it _I _who listened to a heart's most precious, closely guarded secret and then tossed it aside as worthless? _Was it_, Sarah!"

She didn't know when he had leapt to his feet, only that he was towering over her, too close, less than an inch away, his eyes boring down on her. He'd been almost screaming at her, but his face betrayed nothing but deadly calm, stillness in his form that disturbed her more than any violence. He leaned even closer to her, tilting his head so his lips were almost touching her ear lobe, his words honeyed, poisonous, "Was it I who was so afraid of what I had done, that I not only refused to believe it… but blamed my actions upon anything but myself?"

"Jareth," she pleaded, biting down on her lip until it bled to keep her anger in check. She'd be damned if this ended with a fight. _Damned_! "Don't be him."

He fell back from her a little in contempt, undisguised disgust fleeting across his face that he had somehow fallen under the spell of this ignorant, insolent little girl who couldn't seem to appreciate anything that he attempted to do for her. But it was only a little, and though his anger smoldered, his voice was surprisingly gentle, belying the frustration in his eyes, "I will not be but that I am, even for you, Sarah."

Pale blue eyes glittered in the gray haze of dawn pouring over the kitchen through the window; "There is no pretty dream to save you now." He continued in a frighteningly final whisper, "I am not an enchanted prince who'll suddenly awake from a spell and turn out to be as wonderful and flowery as every little girl dreams him. _I am_ what _I am_: cruel, conniving, vain and greedy and everything else that's ever been muttered about me by my loyal subjects- Goblin King and all; accept _all _that I am or nothing, because I _won't_ change for you." His eyes were weary, but determined to a depth she had no desire to contemplate; yet his expression was rigid. "You are not going to discover it was all a misunderstanding, that I'm really a good man trapped by expectations, I am what I am and make no apologies for it, even to the woman I love."

"I know…" she stared up at him with a curious light in her face, a light of discovery different from what he was expecting and shocking even to her. Moments before she had wanted to yell at him, she was reasonably sure she still did, but the desire was incredibly unimportant next to simply making the point, "I know you, Jareth."

He studied her, for once a vague note of uncertainty in him- not that he let it show. "Do you?" his tone was studiously condescending.

She glanced down at the floor, eyes idly trailing upward as she spoke, "I've thought a lot about… everything. I was too shocked at first to really think about what I was saying and I didn't know how it could have happened…"

He snorted derisively.

Sarah smiled just a little bit, "But they _were_ my memories and the more I thought about it, the more I sort of realized it made too much sense." she reached foreword, fingering the thickness of his hair, recalling with a shiver how it felt to thread her fingers through the long, blonde strands of his true shape. "I'm not trying to make excuses for treating you the way I did, I think you already understand that… I don't want you to be prince charming, Jareth…that was never what I wanted."

"Really?" his whisper was clipped and expressionless while somehow retaining a sensual edge that made her insides flutter, "What do you want?"

Sarah refused to believe there was a welling in her eyes that hadn't been there before, "You." _Please, I beg you, don't make this harder, don't make me pay for acting my age._

He started to open his mouth with some reply, what sort she was nervous to speculate, but she stopped him with her fingers against his lips. Wanting to say it all at once if she was going to say it at all: with no interruptions or witticisms from the peanut gallery.

"I love _you_ …Prince charming galloping atop a white charger would have bored me to tears." Her voice shook and tears streamed down her cheeks with the pain of the confession- giving up the ghost hurt more than she though it would. And she had given him back what she had fought so hard to take from him in the first place- power over her.

Jareth stared at her and the silence became oppressive.

"Sarah…" there was more in that one word than in anything else he had ever said to her. More meaning and emotion in that sigh of a whisper than in hours of speeches. Confusion and ecstasy and all the things he'd never allowed to show; and strangely, somehow he still didn't- yet they were all there, emotions she thought she'd never discover.

Her hand curled around his slender neck, a slight trembling in her fingers, and she stared at her own movements, at the strange contrast of her own pale skin made to look dark against the alabaster of his. She smiled tightly, still distracted by the tips of her fingers resting in the hollow of his collar; he looked so delicate standing this close to her, so soft, breakable and impermanent… How had he frightened her so much? How could his lithe, slender form become so infused with power that she had to fight an instinctive urge to kneel when she'd first met him? Why was he so fascinating…?

"I know I didn't go about it in the best way…" she murmured, finally pulling her eyes back to his face and the issue at hand, her eyelids heavy with tears and weariness, "I know it took me a while, but I'm only human." Sarah wished he would say something- _do _something, acknowledge that she had spoken! But Jareth seemed frozen by her confession.

His eyes closed briefly and a muscle in his jaw twitched before he composed himself and met her gaze with a fierce, determined intensity. Bare hands rose to cup Sarah's face, long fingers chill against her skin, sending strange tingling sensations all through her body as he leaned very slightly closer and brushed her lips very softly with his; a ghost of a touch. Sarah's shaking became violent as his fingers caressed her flesh and she was met with a second, light, fleeting kiss.

"I'm still your worst enemy, Sarah, nothing has changed since the day you cast me out…" fingers threading through hers and making an arc with joined hands down to their sides, rising again to press knuckles against lips. "I still stand for everything you fought against in the Labyrinth- isn't that how you saw it?"

She freed her arms to raise them awkwardly to hold him, one hand resting on his shoulder and one sliding around his slim waist, trying to overcome the strangeness of the embrace with sheer force of will. She tipped her head to the side, her expression shifting rapidly between fear and uncertainty, determination and courage. "It was, but I was wrong. I was only fighting the consequences to my own selfishness, wasn't I? I _couldn't _really blame you and that made it _worse. _It taught me the difference between imagination- and immaturity."

Jareth almost appeared to smile a little, but the shadows seemed to gather and thicken, hiding him from her. "Didn't you imply that _I _was immature, Sarah, or does my memory fail me? I'll never change, you know, I'll never be easy to talk to and tease and I'll never be… sweet." He enunciated the word with _refined_ distaste.

Sarah was undaunted- she knew that already, "Neither will I; I think you're the only person that knows that."

Jareth was definitely grinning somewhat evilly now, "I'm despicable."

He was mocking her now, but she'd decided not to let him get away with it and light-heartedly stopped caring, "You're fascinating." She countered.

He tilted his head to the side, regarding her from a new angle, probing with, "I'm arrogant."

She smiled coyly, "It's somewhat justified."

His face turned guarded and serious again and his voice was low and intent, "I _will _rule you."

"You'll _try._" Sarah was only half-joking and the seriousness and significance of the moment could not be shaken.

Jareth leaned closer to her, dropping his knees to bring himself down to her height, facing her directly with a stony sobriety and queer tentativeness; as if he were testing the waters for something in earnest now. She couldn't pin down his tone for any one thing, but this was definitely his trump, his last honourable attempt to actually warn her of what she was in for, (very gracious of him considering the treatment she had half expected of him). "I can be cruel."

She thought for a moment- really thought about that, which she hadn't bothered to do before- opening and then closing her mouth as she studied his stoic face. He turned just slightly away and his eyes gazed off into space over her shoulder, something in their pale blue depths she feared might be regret at giving her the chance to make this decision yet _again. _She felt tears rising again and a few spilling down her cheeks as she reached out to Jareth and, with a guiding hand on the curve of his jaw, turned him to face her, "So… can I."

There was a moment of intense stillness between them and Sarah suddenly felt like she was back in that terror at the center of the Labyrinth, floating pieces of Esher's literally twisted imagination looming strangely in the background as she had her final showdown. As the silky wrongness of Jareth's voice tried to persuade her one last time to take what he offered her, never once giving her enough reason to open her eyes and see what it _was_ after all this time spent taunting her. In that moment, too, time had stopped, slowed, changed, shifted: something happened and it lost all meaning. So much happened in the space of a few seconds her mind hadn't been able to focus on it all and something deep in her brain had snapped. Between the heavy, resounding clangs of that hovering clock her awareness had been broadened, heightened; and she had seen a whole new world in the cracks of time.

The grandfather clock in the front room was tolling now and she was at a loss for when it had started. She was certain it was important, that it meant something and- the opposite of the last time- she felt like the minutes were screaming by her at millions of times their normal speed, as if her time was running desperately short. Forget the world between the seconds, she could barely see her _own_ world. Decision crystallized as the feeling grew and her breathing became laboured. She had said it, she had admitted herself and she had fought every point against it and there was no more running away to be done. No matter how strange it was or how much it was going to hurt her before it worked- if it ever did; she loved Jareth enough to want to be with him all the time for the rest of her life.

Pushing herself up and pulling him down she ended the moment of stillness and thick silence that had only really lasted milliseconds and felt like hours. Their mouths crashed together, lips mashing in the roughness of the kiss as Jareth met her onslaught with one of his own, easily parting her unguarded lips and invading her mouth with reckless abandon. She felt sure she must be drowning as her arms wound around his neck, losing herself to him and yet realizing she could only _be_ herself in his arms now that she had found him. The involving kiss was strangely equal, neither taking a real upper hand or dominating its course; they simply joined in unspoken compromise as they became more and more tangled around each other, twining together in a feverish compulsion to be as close as possible. Sarah relished the willing equality while it lasted.

When, finally, they broke, both were panting for breath, though Jareth seemed to recover himself almost instantly. Tears had streamed down Sarah's face, though she hadn't even noticed them, during the whole long embrace as she resigned herself to the arms and love of her enemy, that she could no longer hide from. Jareth's cheeks glistened with the wetness of her concession, her outpouring of emotion, making it look for one brief moment as if he had been crying too.

"What will you choose, Sarah?" he asked colourlessly, long fingers aimlessly tracing the outline of her now swollen lips.

"Choose?" she looked up at him, more new wonder in her eyes as she reeled in the intensity of what had passed between them.

"You could wish yourself away and become part of the Underground…" he tilted his head to the left, a contemplative look over his features, "Or… you could remain and call on some… _assistance_ in tying up your 'loose ends'." He tilted his head to the right and a grin pulled at his lips. Blond- _platinum_ blond- highlights glinted through his red hair in the light of the rising sun. His eyes rested on Sarah as if daring her to argue that she _would _come to the Underground eventually.

"Tie up loose ends?" she questioned, genuinely curious.

He grinned wickedly.

TO BE CONTINUED...


	3. Up Hill Backward

__

Pika: "Does Bowie really have that one dilated-pupil thing though?"

Yes, he does (img.photobucket. com/albums/v27/TrinityDestler/eyesbowie02.jpg). I'm surprised you never noticed, it's really cool. Most people describe Jareth as having two differently coloured eyes, but he actually has two blue eyes; his left pupil is stuck fully dilated. Apparently when Bowie was a teenager he and a friend got into a fight (over a girl :) ) and the friend punched him in the face. Doctors weren't able to repair the left eye, thus, one more slightly disturbing and very cool aspect of Bowie's look was born. Remove spaces to view pictures. (img.photobucket. com/albums/v27/TrinityDestler/eyesbowie01.jpg)

Somewhat Slightly Dazed

Part III: Up Hill Backwards

"Dad! Karen!" Sarah carefully navigated her new (considerable) girth down the stairs, clutching the banister and feeling very much as if she weighed several million pounds- she just might at this point, she added mentally to her list of grievances. She was fully covered, for once, wearing the only maternity clothes she owned, discovered in the attic at the bottom of a box of baby-related things shoved up there after Karen had Toby.

"_Dad! Karen!_" She shouted again, getting annoyed and wondering why she hadn't been answered. She didn't have the energy to _chase _people anymore!

"In the kitchen, honey!" That was Karen. Dear, sweet wonderful Karen. A year ago even thinking something like that would have been blasphemy to everything Sarah knew, but she had come to absolutely adore her step mother over the last few months. Karen was the only one who tried to make her pregnancy comfortable and not more difficult than it already was, the only one who had forgiven her for the way in which she had perceivably _become _pregnant. And Sarah would be eternally grateful for that. Not to mention her realization about how immature she had been before the Labyrinth and Karen's willingness to forgive her.

"Hey Karen," Sarah turned the corner into the sparklingly clean kitchen, lit to brilliance by the mid-morning sun, streaming in through the big bay window. It was nothing short of a miracle that Sarah was alert, or even awake at all, given she'd spent the night sitting in this room nursing uncountable cups of coca instead of sleeping. She had barely managed to haul herself into bed before her parents woke up.

"Hey dad." She added cautiously, noticing her father hovering over Sunday breakfast and a newspaper at the table. There was a chill distance between father and daughter now, completely apart from the indulgent attitude he had always shown Sarah before. She had always been his little girl, his star, the one he came home to in the years he had been without a wife. Their relationship had been closer, more special, because of the way they had been thrown together with nothing but each other. It still hurt to remember how it was when now… she could still feel that stiffening, that sudden unbridgeable gap. They had become strangers the moment he'd found out about her pregnancy- and Karen had to be the one to tell him the details. Sarah couldn't bear to look into his eyes and tell a truth she understood, deep down, must be a lie- that there had been no boy.

Her father only grunted in response. He couldn't look at her, not now she was showing. He couldn't stand to see that some _child _had impregnated his _child. _Had always thought, no matter how old she got, that nothing like this could ever happen to _his _Sarah; not her, she was too smart, too good…. She was just a _kid._

Sarah smiled weakly and gratefully accepted a glass of juice from Karen, taking a sip before diving in. "I… there's something I have to tell you- both of you- that I should have talked to you about a long time ago." With a sigh she settled herself into a chair, the same chair which had held Jareth mere hours before, mentally readying herself to face anything and taking an unconscious comfort from his lingering magical aura.

She would need her wits about her if she was going to navigate _these _dangers untold and hardships unnumbered successfully- the prospect of this conversation really did make the Labyrinth look like a piece of cake.

Karen's sunny, encouraging smile trembled, but she gallantly held on to it as she took a seat opposite her step-daughter, fidgeting and giving Sarah her patented 'serious eyes'. "Is this about… what it should be about, Sarah?"

Regarding what little remained of her lap, Sarah crushed a tiny habitual flare of anger at Karen's wording, knowing she didn't really mean anything by it and desperate to come off mature- at least until this was over. "Well… you remember I said… I didn't know how… it happened."

Karen's breath caught. Her father's grip on his newspaper became murderous.

Sarah took a deep breath herself; "It's time I told you the real story."

Karen maintained eye-contact; covering the brunette's hand with her own and giving an encouraging squeeze. Sarah's father stared, stone-faced into his breakfast. Well, that's probably the hardest bit over with, she thought bleakly.

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Sarah found it damned inconsiderate of Jareth to do something as nice for her as this. She wouldn't have expected it in a million years, and she resented it when he managed to surprise her, it meant he still had an edge over her. She couldn't possibly deal with such a kindness on his part. Such a wretched, mean, cruel, unjust, despicable _kindness._

Oh you'll pay for this Goblin King, yes you will.

He had given her the chance to make a clean break from her parents, explain her whereabouts and her baby rather than simply disappearing from beneath their noses one night and leaving them wondering and worried about her for the rest of their lives. She hadn't thought he had it in him. Of course, he was certain to watch her trying to come up with a story her parents would believe _and_ every agonizing second of admitting to them that she _did _know how her present state of affairs had come to be. He was _evil. _She _hated _him. Most of all, she hated him for leaving her here to do it alone.

She did _not _miss him.

After the meeting and the strange and painful resolution that they simply belonged together whether either of them really liked the idea or not, Sarah had lain in bed trying to dream up a story that wouldn't end in her being disowned to tell her parents. Jareth, in all his endless imagination could probably have solved everything with a wave of his hand- but he wouldn't, he had warned her he wasn't sweet and he loved to watch her squirm. She was certain he had bets going on her back Underground.

Eventually, after drawing a complete blank until nine o'clock, Sarah decided to tell the simple truth- as closely as it could be told without her ending up in a mental institution. Boy had met girl, etc, etc; and now- don't worry dad- they were to be married. That was probably the closest thing to revenge she would be able to get on her _dear _fiancée- not that he would mind overmuch- but he _had _put into her hands. A fatal mistake.

Sarah looked into Karen's eyes as she waited for the right words to start the worst conversation she would ever have (she hoped nothing worse was in the works, anyway).

"There was this boy…" a thoroughly lame beginning. Said 'boy' was probably laughing his sparkly blond head off. Bastard. "His name is Jamie and he's about to turn eighteen." That was as high as she dare go, age-wise, lest her father press charges against someone who- technically- didn't exist.

Speaking of, her father's grip on his fork was beginning to look painful. She swallowed.

"I met him in a bookshop in town," substitute for 'I met him _in _a book', "he's a foreign exchange student from England, he's no parents back home, but he belonged to a good family and they left him a trust fund he can access when he comes of age." Rather than, 'he's an ageless, immortal Fae being who can magic anything he wants, but probably has pots of money anyway because he's bleeding royalty and won't let anyone forget it.'

Karen pressed a hand to her breast, "What happened to his parents?"

Sarah's mind whirled, since she didn't know the truth about Jareth's parents- or even if he had any- it was easy to lie; "His mother died when he was young and his father was killed in a car accident."

"Oh dear," the blonde looked over at her husband, but he was still staring into his eggs. "Robert?"

"I think it's more important you tell us… how _this _happened." He finally met his daughter's eyes and regarded her levelly with no small amount of anger and betrayal. "We don't really need to have his pedigree, Sarah, unless there's something _else _you're not telling us."

Sarah's chin came up, "I was going to tell you, dad, if you'd give me a chance."

Karen became referee, not for the first time, "Robert, Sarah, now, let's not start an argument before everyone's put their cards down." It seemed Karen was a gambling addict in another lifetime, because her analogies often had to do with poker. "Go on, Sarah, we're listening."

She'd actually hoped to let her father blow off some steam, he was normally a very gentle, almost passive person, but if looks could kill… The change in him was unsettling, but if he let go he may be able to think more clearly. She could use all the help she could get as far as being rational right now.

"We were both looking for the same book, in the bookshop," she went on, carefully weighing everything before she said it. "And ran into each other at the shelf, both reaching for the only copy. We started talking about the book and fantasy and school and… just everything… and…" At a loss, Sarah paused, her infamous imagination failing her for the first time; what the hell was she going to call the Labyrinth in this 'soap opera weekly' version of her life story? Toby had become a book and she had come off looking a hell of a lot better, but the Labyrinth…

It wouldn't like it if she turned it into something too trivial. And it _would _know. She didn't doubt it for a second. She supposed it might be best if she didn't try to include it and neglected to mention it altogether.

"Was it that little red book? The one you take with you everywhere?" Sarah never would have known that Karen noticed, much less that she cared enough at the time to remember how important that little volume was to her misbehaved step daughter.

"Actually… yes." Sarah looked up at the older women almost gratefully. If that giant maze did know she was talking about it, it should be placated. "It… reminded me of him."

Robert leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms; his gaze was heavy and shadowed. "What exactly are you saying, Sarah? And don't look at me like that, I'm your father and you are still a child no matter what you've gone and done to yourself. You tell me what's going on here!"

Her expression hardened and Sarah set her jaw, no, she couldn't explode right now. She _could not _explode right now!

"I'm not a child!" she thought she'd burst, the room shuddered with the force of her cry. "I haven't been a child since mom left, since she got on that plane and never looked back! I haven't been a child because I wouldn't have lasted one second if I didn't grow up _that night! _Someone had to take care of _you_ and there _wasn't _anyone else, was there, daddy? You needed me to be your little girl; but who do you think cleaned the house, did the dishes, walked the dog, answered the phone, took out the trash, set the table- who cooked dinner for three years until Karen came along? It wasn't you, dad! You were too buried in feeling sorry for yourself and your _needs _to even notice!"

Only Sarah's panting for breath filled the silence that followed. Minutes went by like hours and it was Sarah's voice again that broke the silence.

"I'm saying that I fell in love, that I'm old enough to make decisions on my own, that I'm not a little girl and I'm going to have a child of my own soon and I'm _saying,_ daddy, that there's another man in my life that isn't you. _You_ will have to make peace with that because I'm going to marry him and it's not up for discussion." She crossed her own arms, resting them on her swollen belly and watching her father with fire and brimstone in her dark green eyes.

Robert Williams looked across the table and saw his daughter as if for the first time, as the young woman that she had become. When had it happened? Had he really been so blind that he hadn't seen her change so much? When did a doting father have to realize that his little girl was growing up? Did this mean that he _had _to lose her to this no-good Jamie punk?

"Sarah… I'm sorry that I never appreciated how much you missed out on because of your mom… but you can't honestly think that that makes what you've done okay. You've been irresponsible to a point I never could have dreamed you would be, I expected better than that from you and I'm disappointed that you think you'll be treated like an adult without acting like one." He leaned foreword, keeping a careful reign on his temper and finding his old calm, rational parenting-style returning to him. "I'm still angry, Sarah, hurt and angry that you could do something so… well, careless!"

"Dad, I-"

"No. I don't want to hear you preach at me about making your own decisions. If it had been a decision you wouldn't have tried so hard to deny it. You made a mistake and Karen and I will need some time to forgive you. That doesn't mean that we stop loving you, Sarah, and it doesn't mean… doesn't mean…" Robert sucked in a breath and clenched his fists, "It doesn't mean that I won't try to give 'Jamie' a chance."

A steely gaze held his own. Sarah turned her head after one of the longest minutes of his life; "I'm going to marry him."

"You're too young to make that choice."

"I'm going to marry him."

"Sarah…"

"I'm carrying his child, dad, what do you think is the more responsible thing to do?"

Robert sighed. "Did he give you a ring?" A sudden, terrible thought struck him, "Or have you even told him about this?"

"Dad! He asked me! And of course, what do you _take _me for!" She wanted to scream in frustration. How could he even ask something like that!

"All it takes, Sarah, is one misstep of this magnitude to shatter our faith in you. I hope you remember that." He wondered vaguely if he was getting through to her at all. He resigned himself all the same, "Well, when is… Jamie coming to meet us?"

Sarah smiled winningly, "Actually, since he won't be going back to England, he has no where to stay and I was thinking it would be a waste if he were to stay anywhere else but with us- it would give you a chance to get to know him." Oh yes, revenge was sweet.

Robert balked, but Karen slid in smoothly before he had a chance to protest, "Of course, dear, it's only natural. It would be silly for him to stay anywhere else. Positively _silly_." She gave her husband a meaningful look over her shoulder.

He mumbled something under his breath.

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When, later that evening, Sarah summoned her supernatural fiancée; (supposedly to bring him up to speed, but she was certain he already knew), he started laughing before she could say a word and announced that he was going to enjoy the whole thing.

"Though I don't know why, my dear, you would ask them to have me stay. Surely the less your parents find out about me the better." Jareth was still in his red-headed glamour and the relaxed, robe-like clothing of the night before. His bare feet were much, much too perfect to be at all fair. "Wouldn't you agree?"

"Oh I don't know, shouldn't my parents get to know their future son-in-law? I love you, _darling, _why wouldn't they?" She was barely suppressing her manic grin. This had to rattle him, no man ever liked to meet his in-laws, their worst fear being prolonged exposure; she was combining the two.

"It is common knowledge, Sarah, that you are an exception to almost every rule ever created." He didn't bother to suppress his. "I suppose, though, if you insist…"

As she watched, his red hair grew longer, fuller and unkempt, the maturity fleeing from his features, his sharp cheekbones softening- but only a little, and a sparkling merriment seeping into his eyes that gave a sort of almost innocence to his face that was not there before. There was still a wisdom in the depths of his eyes, a self-awareness far too developed for any eighteen year-old, too poised and regal, as if he had no reason to doubt even the slightest movement of his pinky finger- which he probably hadn't. Though some of the hardness had melted from his features and his gaze and fringe hung alluringly in his eyes, he didn't begin to look human.

His formerly ageless face was now somewhat recognizable as between nineteen and twenty-five, but that quality of other-ness remained, otherworldly was otherworldly no matter how much glamour you put over top of it. Jareth grinned at her, pointed teeth flashing. He seemed depressingly undaunted by the whole affair.

She reached up and tapped one lethal-looking incisor, handily changing the subject; "Can't you hide that, too? It doesn't look… right."

He shook his head in a cascade of fiery red hair, he seemed amused by this new unruliness, but his eyes remained serious. "I cannot conceal my true nature completely. For every faery or changeling there must be something to give them away. The Powers That Be don't think it fair to pick on humans without giving them a sporting chance." He grinned again, "The more I try to hide what I am, the more pronounced my defect will become." He shrugged regally, "It is the mark of the true-blooded Tuatha de Danann."

Sarah thoughts skipped on that title, "The Tuatha de Danann?" she blinked at him innocently, wondering how difficult it would be to get him to explain the truth (or lack thereof) behind every fairy tale ever written.

Jareth threw himself, elegantly somehow, down on the bed, smirking up at her in that knowing fashion, "The Daoine Sidh, the Faery Men, the Children of Life, the titles go on and on… whatever humans have called us, or we have called ourselves over the millennia." He inspected his fingernails, candidly watching Sarah from the corner of his eye, "Said to have invaded Ireland in a fleet of mist and flying ships, a race of magic and infinitely superior knowledge."

Sarah made a face she thought he couldn't see, "Of course." She muttered sarcastically.

The Goblin King's amusement only increased, "First we were the conquerors, then conquered, then legend and finally… gods." He looked up at her through newly long, thick eyelashes, facing her fully; beginning to be serious about what he was telling her. "I am very old, Sarah, much older than you could possibly have imagined. There was a time when mortals honoured me."

She merely stared, unsure whether to believe him or not. Though he had never lied to her, he had done his fair share of bending the truth. It was very possible he was just playing with her head.

"Spirit of mischief, wine and seduction," he continued, smirking again briefly over this; making her hear in her head a favourite quote from drama class: _Lord, what fools these mortals be!_

Jareth met her eyes again, his mismatched gaze intense and measuring, "I, Sarah, whom you're going to marry in some small Aboveground chapel was once revered by the pagans as a god." He titled his head, gauging her reaction, "What do you think of that?"

"Fishing for awe?" She had to admit, if he was, he had succeeded. If he was telling the truth. Her own truth be told, she had never thought about where a being like him would come from, the Book had never even specified what the Goblin King _was_, for all she knew, he could have been a goblin. Reviewing everything she'd ever heard about the origin of the Fae or the faery folk, she wondered if she wouldn't be able to catch him in a white lie. "I thought the goddess Danu created the Fae?"

His eyebrows arched at that and her carefully affected pensive expression, then he smiled and shook his head, and "Some legends are more accurate than others- the faeries don't really know themselves how it all fits together. They don't particularly care; sense and logic couldn't be more irrelevant for them. Terribly irresponsible as a people… snatching humans, making deals with devils…" He was definitely baiting her now.

"I'm not going to give you the satisfaction of asking. Tell me if you're going to tell me." Sarah crossed her arms and barely managed to not stick her tongue out at him.

Jareth laughed, his high musical laugh that sent shivers up from her toes all the way to the tips of her hair. He decided to tell her before she could think of some way to make him laugh again. "You've probably heard the story, dear Sarah; When good and evil were at war and God was throwing the fallen out of Heaven, some of the angels were… on the fence, so to speak, unwilling to take sides between Lucifer and God. Saint Michael the archangel stood up for them and said that though they weren't good enough for Heaven," he grinned wickedly, "they weren't bad enough for Hell, either. So, in disgrace, they were banished to earth for being neutral to live in sidhs and pester mortals… Humans think we bother them because we are jealous of the relationship they can have with God that we cannot share, perhaps… it's also frightfully entertaining."

His jaw twitched to the side and then set and he shrugged, "The oldest, the true bloods got misdirected worship, became too tangled up in mortal affairs and god-hood and when the mortals ceased to believe in them… they ceased to exist. Petty, short-lived praise for deeds they didn't do… it was incredible arrogance." He was voice was thick with disdain and disgust.

Sarah was staring wide-eyed now, her hand reached out of it's own accord and gripped his arm; he actually jumped, startled from his reverie. "Jareth… you won't ever… I mean if…?"

His expression softened to an indulgent smile, a real smile, the like of which she had rarely seen him wear. Nothing pleased him nearly so much as the moments when Sarah proved, unknowingly, that she really had fallen in love with him. He made a dismissive gesture, then rested his hand on her cheek. "I was never overly concerned with what mortals thought or believed about me, my dear… at least, I was not, until I met you, Sarah."

She regarded him levelly, "You'll never just one day fade away? Jareth, I'm not kidding, if you-!"

He laughed, that outrageously melodic laugh and caught the hand which had been making threatening gestures towards him, "My dear Sarah! Your concern is appreciated, but I doubt the forces of the universe would be so generous with you as I was, should you try to take _them_ on!" He mimicked her pout, then smiled again, softly, "I will always be, Sarah…"

Ah, the beautiful contradiction that is Jareth. She relaxed into his arms as soft lips met hers.

Sarah stopped herself from allowing the conversation to end there, "Jareth…?"

"Mmm?" his head lolled to the side, softened, young-looking features blissful as his eyes roved over her face. It was very strange to her; to see someone so timeless confined to just one period of life… vaguely unsettling compared with the way he had been before. He could have been almost any age, depending on how one looked at him.

"If you're a Fae, that means you're of vaguely Irish heritage, so…"

He interrupted, "I suppose, if you wanted to, you could put it that way, but I'm not really-"

She shook her head, returning the favour, "No listen, if… yeah; so, why do you talk with a South London accent?"

Jareth blinked, taken (for once) by surprise, "Why? Don't you like it?"

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